Meetings

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ACQWA 3rd General Assembly Meeting

Zaragoza, Spain, 14-16 September 2011

Zaragoza venue

This year, the ACQWA project Annual General Assembly Meeting will take place in Zaragoza, Spain, from early morning on Wednesday, September 14 to late morning of Friday, September 16. Please plan on arriving in the afternoon or evening of September 13, and departing after the close of the morning on September 16.

For the ACQWA Management Board members, a meeting is planned to begin just after the close of the General Assembly and should be completed by about 13:00 on September 16.

Our host this year will be Dr. Juan-Ignacio Lopez Moreno, co-chair of ACQWA Work-Package 4, from the Institute for Pyrenean Ecology (IPE), who has kindly made all the local arrangements.

The city is easily reached by train from Madrid (about 1 hour 20 minutes from Atocha Station, itself reached by metro from Madrid-Barajas International Airport) and from Barcelona (about 1 hour 45 minutes, from Barcelona-Sants station that also has a train connection from Barcelona Airport). In addition, Ryanair flies to Zaragoza from Milano (Bergamo), Roma (Cianpigno), Brussels (Charleroi), Paris (Beauvais) and London (Standsted). When travelling by train, it is recommended to purchase your ticket in advance via the Spanish railway (RENFE) website in order to obtain more competitive prices and to guarantee a seat if you travel during peak hours. The RENFE website is the following:

The Conference Dinner will be held from 9 PM on Thursday, September 15, at the Restaurant "El Club Naútico". More information will be provided to participants in Zaragoza.

Registration fees

In order to cover some of the local costs, registration fees will be collected upon registration in Zaragoza. It is expected that the fee will be about 100 EUR.

General Assembly programme

Please check here roughly 2-3 weeks prior to the General Assembly to have a complete meeting programme that will be available for download as a pdf file. The proposed structure, as given in the pdf file below, is to have a mix of presentations of the latest results from each Work Package (WP), and ample time for individual WP discussions, cross-WP discussions, and bilateral meetings between different tasks. The programme will therefore be rather intense for the duration of the General Assembly, which is why we request that participants remain for the duration of the meeting.

WP4 will organize a meeting the day before the beginning of the General Assembly (Tuesday, September 13), in order to ensure that there will be enough time to organize the preparation of the upcoming deliverables and the flow of information between the different linked tasks within WP4 and between WP3 and WP4.

ACQWA Management Board Meeting

A meeting of the Management Board will take place immediately after the close of the General Assembly, around mid-morning of September 16. A separate agenda will be sent to the Board members prior to the meeting.

General assembly 2010

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ACQWA
2nd
Annual General Assembly Meeting

Dundee,
Scotland, 22-24 September 2010

Venue
/ Accommodation:

The
meeting will take place in the City Quay suite at the Apex Hotel,
Dundee (http://www.apexhotels.co.uk/hotels/dundee-city-quay/).
Rooms have been reserved for delegates at a special rate for the
meeting - £75 for a single room and £85 for a double (breakfast
included).

Booking:

Rooms should be booked through the
Apex Hotels website or by phoning +44 (0)845 365 0000, but please
ensure that you enter the following code – UNI2109 – to ensure
that you get the preferential rate. If you are staying for longer,
this rate should apply to your entire stay.

Please
note that the preferential rates will be guaranteed only until the
28th
of August.

For details regarding how to get
to the hotel, please see the attached Travel Guide.

Registration:

Please
register as far in advance as possible. Registration should be done
by going to the following web address:

The
cost of registration is £150 (approx. EURO 180 now). This fee
includes lunch and coffee breaks at the hotel during the meeting, and
also covers the costs of the gala dinner on the 22nd
(see
below).

Social
Events:

Ice-breaker / dinner

A
gala dinner has been organised on the night of the 22nd.
It will take place on HM Frigate Unicorn (http://www.frigateunicorn.org/),
the world’s sixth oldest floating ship. After dinner, a ceilidh
dance will be held on the ship, where delegates will learn
(hopefully) some Scottish dances with live musical accompaniment.

Men often wear kilts at these
dances. If you would like to wear a kilt to this event, we can
arrange this for you – the cost will be around £40. Please contact
Andrew Allan (
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
) directly for further details.
We have organised kilts for international delegates to Dundee in the
past and it has been extremely popular. We hope you’ll take this
opportunity to try it.

Whisky tasting

On
the night of 23rd
September, we are hoping to arrange a whisky-tasting event. Details
will be made available soon.Costs will unfortunately not be covered
by the Registration Fee.

Accompanying Persons:

If delegates are intending to
bring additional guests with them to Scotland, we would be happy to
prepare an additional accompanying persons programme incorporating
local attractions in Dundee, St. Andrews and the surrounding areas.
Please contact Andrew Allan directly if you would be interested.

Saturday
25th
September

If
sufficient numbers of delegates will be staying for the weekend and
would be interested in a trip into the Scottish mountains, we are
happy to organise one. Please let Andrew know if this would be of
interest.

After
recent discussions with the European Commission, it became apparent
that it would be useful to hold a workshop between the coordinators
and perhaps a limited number of key scientists working within
European FP6 and FP7 projects that are broadly related to water and
climate. The aim of this meeting is to identify key strengths and
weaknesses in the different projects, and see whether some of the
weaknesses (methodologies, models, data) can be overcome through (i)
collaborative action with other projects or through (ii) the
suggestion of future call topics and the initiation of new projects.
If this approach were to be successful, there would indeed be added
value to all the projects that we collectively represent.

Please
note that the “EU Water Science Gaps Workshop” will be a small
meeting (and not a conference) and complementary to the “Policy
Meeting” organized by the European Commission in June 2010. There
will be space for no more than 40 EU-FP6 and FP7 project
coordinators, key researchers in addition to a few invited
international experts.

Workshop topics and schedule

The
meeting will include "upstream" as well as "downstream"
issues of water. The final list of workshop topics will be adapted
based on the background and interests of participants, but should at
least include: floods, droughts, water quality, adaptation in the
water sector, integrated management of climate change impacts (incl.
socio-economics); as well as multi-risk evaluation, prevention, and
preparedness.

January
15, 2011 Reporting back from the breakout sessions, wrap-up,
follow-up

Participants
are expected to arrive at Riederalp in the afternoon of Wednesday,
January 12, 2011 and will start the meeting with an early evening
icebreaker. On Thursday and Friday mornings, we will have a limited
number of keynotes on the topics listed above, followed by thematic
breakout discussions in the late morning and late afternoon. From
noon to late afternoon, there will be time for socializing on the ski
or cross-country runs or on the sunny terrace of the conference
hotel. On Saturday morning, breakout session leaders will report back
to the plenum, we will wrap-up outcomes of the workshop and define
strategies for the future (science, research directions, future
calls, ...). The workshop will end on Saturday, January 15, 2011 at
noon.

Registration and payment

Please
register early, but no later than September 30, 2010 using the form
below. Slots will be filled on a first come, first served basis. The
cost of participation (lump sum) at the “EU Water Science Gaps
Workshop” is 600 Euros and will include the registration fee, hotel
accommodation, half board, coffee breaks and non-alcoholic beverages.
The registration fee MUST be paid before November 15, 2010 to confirm your
registration through bank transfer to the following account:

The
European Commission will make an effort to raise funds to reimburse
coordinators of EU-FP6 and 7 projects that will be finished before
January 2011.

Workshop Venue

Riederalp is a car-free
resort in the UNESCO World Heritage "Aletsch Glacier"
Region. The resort is at equal distance (roughly three hours by
train) from Geneva-Cointrin, Zurich-Kloten and Milano-Malpensa
airports. Please note that you will need to change trains in Brig and
take the small mountain railway as far as Mörel, and then the
cable-car to Riederalp. Information on times and connections is
available on the Swiss Federal Railroadwebsite. Simply type in your station of origin and “Riederalp” as
your destination.

Riederalp
is a small summer and winter village in the region of the largest
glacier of the European Alps, the Aletsch Glacier. It lies on a
south-facing slope with spectacular views to the high summits of the
Valais Alps on the other side of the Rhone Valley. It is one of about
14 Swiss resorts that are free of all road traffic.

The
village is located at 1,900 altitude, and end January should be good
for skiing (despite global warming!), with ski runs reaching above
2,500 m. You can check out the webcams; there are several views in the village and on the slopes that you can
select by scrolling down this page.

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General assembly 2009

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The 2009 General Assembly of ACQWA project has taken place in Courmayeur (Italy), Hotel Pavillon, September 28-30 2009.